Encyclopedia of Religion

(Darren Dugan) #1

198 and 203—Tertullian exhibited similar tendencies to dis-
tinguish Christian from pagan life. Those being baptized
should come not to have sins forgiven, he insisted, but “be-
cause they have ceased sinning.” For those who sin after bap-
tism martyrdom is “a second baptism.” In some contrast to
his later stance in On Modesty, written about 210 or 211,
Tertullian reluctantly followed the Shepherd of Hermas (c.
140) in permitting repentance for serious sins following bap-
tism, but he openly expressed admiration for the Montanist
prohibition of second marriages and refusal to grant forgive-
ness to fornicators or adulterers. In To His Wife he urged her,
first, not to remarry if he should die, but then, if she should
nevertheless marry again, not to marry a pagan. On Modesty
classified second marriages, whether after the death of a
spouse or not, “the same as adultery” and labeled Hermas
“the shepherd of adulterers.” In On Patience Tertullian laud-
ed patience as the Christian virtue par excellence, especially
in the face of death and martyrdom.


During his Montanist years, Tertullian sharpened the
lines separating Christian and pagan. In On the Wearing of
the Laurel Wreath he set forth the rule that whatever scrip-
tures do not explicitly permit is forbidden. Since wearing the
laurel was of pagan origins, it was idolatrous and thus pro-
hibited for Christians, as was military service. In On Flight
in Persecution Tertullian negated the more humane view
presented in To His Wife and On Patience and sternly forbade
escape. Persecution is God’s, not the devil’s, will, thus no
Christian should flee. He saved his harshest words, however,
for the Valentinian gnostics who encouraged the faithful to
flee persecution. Their teaching he called the “scorpion’s
sting” in a work bearing that title. In On Exhortation to Chas-
tity and On Monogamy the formidable rigorist stoutly de-
fended the Montanist insistence on a single marriage and
preference for celibacy. Christian perfection, he argued, de-
scended from virginity from birth, to virginity from the new
birth, to continence within marriage. Against the Marcio-
nites, however, Tertullian did affirm the sanctity of marriage.
In On Fasting he commended also the zeal of Montanists for
more fasts. In On the Veiling of Virgins he urged virgins to
take the veil and flee the temptations of the world.


Apart from his curious defense of his wearing the palli-
um as an appropriate Christian “philosopher’s” dress, the re-
maining writings of Tertullian are antiheretical. Here, too,
Tertullian manifested his separatist inclinations. “What has
Jerusalem to do with Athens, the church with the academy,
the Christian with the heretic?” he demanded to know. Like
Irenaeus, he proceeded to set forth the “prescription” that
heresy represented a departure from the truth that Christ de-
livered to the apostles and they to apostolic churches. He re-
iterated the point in the polemic Against Hermogenes, in
which he countered the view that God created the soul from
preexistent matter. In a more extensive work, On the Soul,
Tertullian again took up his cudgels against the philosophers,
“those patriarchs of the heretics.” Although grudgingly ad-
mitting that some philosophers had happened on the truth,


he himself insisted on obtaining truth from revelation, in-
cluding that obtained through Montanist seers. A prophet-
ess, for instance, confirmed his (and the Stoics’) concept of
a corporeal soul. In his five books Against Marcion, the lon-
gest of his writings, and in the treatises On the Flesh of Christ
and On the Resurrection of the Flesh he repudiated Marcionite
and Valentinian views as being of pagan origin. Similarly, the
polemic Against the Valentinians ridiculed the Valentinian
system for inconsistencies and contradictions characteristic
of pagan philosophies. Finally, in Against Praxeas he rejected
modalism in godhead on the grounds of inconsistency and
its conflict with “the rule of truth.”
THOUGHT. Tertullian labored assiduously to defend Chris-
tianity from the culture of his day. With that end in view
he accentuated the authority of the rule of truth, a summary
of the faith, and of the Bible interpreted more or less literally
but with careful reference to context and his own situation.
He also invented ecclesiastical Latin. These factors notwith-
standing, he in no way equaled Irenaeus, whose treatise
Against Heresies he invoked often, in development of a bibli-
cal theology. On the contrary, he drew many of his basic pre-
suppositions from Stoicism and thus laid the ground for a
distinctive Latin theology. His enduring contribution lay in
his gift for finding apt formulas to state particular truths of
faith.
Stoicism influenced Tertullian’s concept both of God
and of the soul as corporeal. He asserted that nothing can
exist without a body. Thus, even though God is spirit, God
is also body. So also is the soul corporeal. If it were not cor-
poreal, it could not desert the body.
From this important assumption Tertullian deduced
another: the transmission of sin through generation. Every
human soul is a branch of Adam’s soul; therefore, every soul
inherits characteristics of Adam’s soul, including sin. Tertul-
lian, however, did not add to this a conclusion Augustine
reached, that is, that guilt is also inherited.
In his refutation of modalism Tertullian won a victory
for the Logos Christology of the apologists and Irenaeus. The
first to use the term Trinitas (“trinity”), he argued that one
God is simultaneously Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, not suc-
cessively, as Praxeas held. Simultaneity is possible if the Trin-
ity is “one substance in three persons”: “three, however, not
in unchangeable condition, but in rank; not in substance,
but in attitude; not in office, but in appearance;—but of one
nature and of one reality and of one power, because there is
one God from whom those ranks and attitudes and appear-
ances are derived in the name of Father and Son and Holy
Spirit.” At the same time Tertullian recognized that to say
the Son is “of one substance” with the Father poses a prob-
lem for his humanity and might lead, as it did later, to confu-
sion as to the Son’s personhood. Anticipating later debate,
he repudiated the idea of a mixing or confusion of natures
in some tertium quid.
On some matters of doctrine Tertullian’s Montanism
left a mark, although it is difficult to say exactly what the

9086 TERTULLIAN

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